Why do psychic functions disappear the moment the dowser cannot be aware of the location of the object. The Chevreul pendulum was a good example. Monsieur Chevreul was a true skeptic and scientist in that he took a phenomenon that he did not understand and figured it out using the scientific method.
I think you're asking why is the paranormal in general so elusive. The scientific method just isn't up to the task, because scientists have an unconscious mind. Before science can take on the paranormal, scientists have to take on their unconscious minds.
Do you have ANY idea what lurks in the unconscious mind?
http://www.amazon.com/The-Trickster-Paranormal-George-Hansen/dp/1401000827
"Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths" -Joseph Campbell
Vladimir Propp, literary theorist, thought that Russian folktales could be seen as variations of a few underlying plot elements. Generally, a preliminary situation is followed by "misfortune or lack" and then by a sequence of events that repairs what misfortune or lack disturbed. The trickster figure mischief-maker and thief is one of the prime movers of the narrative. He gets the story moving and it comes to an end when he and his mischief have been dealt with.
There are only a few ways to deal with the trickster. A limited number of plots. From the threshold there are only a few ways the trickster can move. He can come inside, he can leave entirely, or he can stay exactly where he started, resisting all attempts to civilize or exile. From the tricksters point of view, staying on the threshold is the ideal. It gives us the plot that never resolves, the endlessly strung-together Coyote tales each linked to each with the phrase "Coyote was going along..."
Awakened consciousness is the potential end of the narrative, without it the tale can go on and on, another night, another season... another unconscious projection of the trickster archetype that we can't withdraw and can't exile.
"The so-called civilized man has forgotten the trickster. He remembers him only figuratively and metaphorically, when, irritated by his own ineptitude, he speaks of fate playing tricks on him or of things being bewitched. He never suspects that his own hidden and apparently harmless shadow has qualities whose dangerousness exceeds his wildest dreams." -Carl Jung
The trickster figure is more than a mere story, more than a mere metaphor. It's an archetype of the collective unconscious. It's part of us, and our minds project it "out there" in symbolic, poetic, cryptic, semi-autonomous thought-forms that change from culture to culture, age to age, person to person, religion to religion.
We are all psychic, and we are mostly ignorant of that fact. But our ignorance of that fact doesn't mean that our minds don't utilize that ability unconsciously. People who don't believe in psychic ability are still using it, unconsciously, even to protect their disbelief. It's called the sheep-goat effect. It was discovered by Gertrude Schmeidler.
"The data convinced me. Repeatedly, average ESP scores of subjects who rejected any possibility of ESP success (whom I called goats) were lower than average ESP scores of all other subjects (whom I called sheep). This was inexplicable by the physical laws we knew; it implied unexplored processes in the universe, an exciting new field for research. From then on, naturally, my primary research interest was parapsychology." -Gertrude Schmeidler
"Goats", or test subjects who don't believe in psychic ability, unconsciously use their hidden psychic ability to suppress evidence that contradicts their conscious belief-system resulting in low scores.
"Sheep" are test subjects who believe in psychic ability and so they have nothing to fear from high scores. So their psychic ability comes forth to conscious awareness much easier.
"The sheep thought they could do it, they got "good" scores, they were happy. The goats knew there was no ESP, nothing to get, they got poor scores, they were happy, that "proved" their belief. These were not people who were sophisticated enough about statistics to know that scoring below chance could be significant…
Many other experimenters replicated this effect over the years.
The only way I've ever been able to understand it is to think that the goats occasionally used ESP, but on an unconscious level, to know what the next card was and then their unconscious, acting in the service of their conscious belief system, influenced them to call anything but the correct one." -Charles Tart
